A Pink Carnation and a Pickup Truck
by Kyilliki
Summary: A handful of sweet moments between Edward and Carlisle through the years. This fic is a commissioned piece, written for Fandomaid for Somalia. Slash, AU.
1. 1951

_**A PINK CARNATION AND A PICK-UP TRUCK**_

**PAIRING: **Edward/Carlisle

**RATING: **A warm and cuddly T, just barely.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **This series of vignettes was commissioned by a dear friend, Pace is the Trick, as part of fandomaid's campaign to fight famine in Somalia. She requested that I write a series of sweet little moments between Edward and Carlisle, taking place between 1950 and the present day. Furthermore, we decided that each vignette would have the general theme of Americana. I'm Canadian, so I definitely might have chosen many of the more cliched aspects of my neighbours to the south to write about. For that, I apologize.

These stories occur in her preferred alternate universe interpretation of canon: Carlisle only turned Edward, meaning that the other Cullens do not exist.

The title of this fic is, of course, taken from the song 'Bye, Bye Miss American Pie' by Don McLean.

* * *

><p><em>1951: It's not Thanksgiving without pie<br>_

Thanksgiving had always painted Carlisle's mind with deep ambivalence. Before Edward had stumbled into his life with all of the precision and tidiness of an automobile accident, he had spent the day lost in thought, trying to assign names to everything he was grateful for, and rarely succeeding.

It had become easier. Now, all he had to think of was the play of sunlight on bronze while pale fingers picked out the notes of a stubborn sonata, and his heart was suffused with heat and passionate thanks to anyone who would listen.

"Carlisle!"

His reverie was shattered by his mate, who looked at him critically.

"Yes, Edward?" he asked, his mouth softened by a smile as it shaped the consonants of his lover's name.

"You need to put on your tie. Eleazar and Carmen will be arriving soon."

The doctor nodded. His dear friends from Alaska were the only company they were expecting, but the apartment had been polished to an unnatural state of cleanliness nonetheless.

"_Very _soon," the copper-haired boy added.

"You are counting down the minutes until Tanya gets here, aren't you?" Carlisle laughed, remembering the jagged relationship that Edward had somehow managed to develop with the pretty succubus from Denali. A little tension crept into his mate's voice at the very memory of her, and the promise of a visit was likely even more terrifying.

"Have I mentioned that she's my favourite?"

"Your favourite what, precisely?" Carlisle asked with a grin.

Edward glared.

[-]

"Happy Thanksgiving!" Irina sang. She was terribly pretty, with her pale hair caught in curls and her mouth a bright and sinful crimson.

"We brought you pie. Do people normally eat pie for Thanksgiving?" Kate offered Carlisle a jumble of cherry and crust in a box. It had not quite survived the journey.

"Oh, our brothers are so handsome!" Tanya said brightly. The three sisters had always made a point to announce that Carlisle and Edward were their siblings, thank you very much, whenever they visited, just loud enough for the neighbours to hear. It tended to put the rumours to rest.

"My little brother doesn't want to give me a hug!" she continued, feigning a pout.

Edward flinched, but did not flee. He considered that quite an accomplishment.

"Give Edward a little air," Carmen said gently, appearing behind her fair-haired coven-mates. Her smile was soothing as the sea. "I don't know if he is accustomed to company quite like yours."

The thin young man gave her a grateful nod before shaking Eleazar's hand in greeting.

[-]

It was only a matter of time until Tanya cornered him in the kitchen, Edward decided. Remarkably, it had taken her less than half an hour.

He had never really _understood _the leader of the Denali coven. She was an _I-Love-Lucy_ redhead, too eager to push and prod with those ruby-tipped fingers of hers, until something exploded into a messy aftermath. Then, she would laugh and laugh, delighting in the chaos. The last time he had seen her, she had made her intentions towards him painfully clear.

While he was in love with Carlisle.

Thoroughly _indecent_. Being a succubus was no excuse.

"Hello, Tanya. How are you?" he murmured, looking firmly at his feet and avoiding the scandalous cacophony of her mind.

"Quite well. And yourself, Edward?"

She could be remarkably polite when she wanted to be, he'd give her that.

"Just fine."

Awkward silence. She took the pie out of its box and examined her sticky fingers worriedly.

"Should we put it in the oven? I notice your apartment is the only one that doesn't smell of cooking," she suggested, kneeling in front of the appliance. "You're going to need to help me with this."

He did, adjusting the temperature so it was just high enough to heat the battered pastry without burning it.

"You know that I don't bite," she said conversationally, leaning back against the counter. "Previous encounters notwithstanding."

Her dress was vivid, splotched with flowers in shades of violet and turquoise. It was impossible to look anywhere else.

"You were...quite overwhelming," Edward said, stiffly courteous.

"And you were scared, infatuated and a little self-righteous. Can you blame me for finding that irresistible?" she crooned, so low that only he could hear it. Her laughter, strangely deep, filled the space between them.

Such honesty, bordering on bluntness, never failed to shock him into silence.

"You were no-one's mate," she mused. "You can hardly accuse me of trying to instigate adultery."

Edward turned that statement over cautiously in his thoughts. "And now that I do have a mate—?" he wondered.

"You and Carlisle are almost nauseatingly perfect together," Tanya said, eyeing her nails, her mouth a bloody smirk. "I wouldn't dare interfere."

"Really?"

"The martyr and the melancholist. It's poetic."

It was then that Edward realized that there was nothing unkind in her mind. Whimsical, maybe. A little mocking, certainly. Good-natured nonetheless.

"You surprise me, Tanya," he said, his concession grudging.

"I can't think why."

She ruffled his hair, wincing at the brilliantine and murmuring something about stupid mortal fashions before sashaying out of the kitchen, to rejoin her sisters in their dizzying knot of blonde curls and exquisite smiles.

[-]

"Tanya thinks we're perfect," Edward murmured in Carlisle's ear, more breathlessly than he would have liked, after their guests had departed, leaving only the echoes of merriment and a few disordered couch cushions in their wake.

"Does she now?" the older man said, smiling a little and twining a casual arm around his mate's waist. The kiss he pressed to the underside of his chin, where his pulse would have once nestled, was honey-sweet in its devotion. "It's good to have a second opinion."

Edward rolled his eyes, although he was unable to suppress a gleeful grin.

"Thank God a succubus has given her approval of our relationship."


	2. 1964

_1964: Finding Vermont in a Chevrolet was a good idea on paper  
><em>

Carlisle liked adventure. It was an endearing trait, all things considered, but he did tend to get it wrong sometimes.

Take right now, for instance.

Edward leaned against the pretty white doorframe of their suburban dream, eyeing the driveway with more than a little bit of condemnation in his eyes. Instead of neat pavement edged with flowers, all he saw was a pickup truck. Offensively red. Heavy. Loud. No finesse at all.

Carlisle sat behind the wheel, grinning like a small child promised a particularly opulent Christmas present.

"You sold our _car_?" Edward choked. "You sold my beautiful Plymouth and substituted it with a _Chevy_?"

In his distress, he did not bother reading his mate's mind or checking the garage.

Carlisle fled from the driver's seat and appeared at his side with such speed that any curious neighbours were bound to be alarmed.

"No, no, nothing like that," he insisted, his tawny eyes painfully sincere and his thoughts feathery with apology. "I just rented this for the weekend. I—I thought you would like it."

The doctor's puppy-dog gaze may very well have been his gift.

"I do," the mind-reader said. "Just don't scare me like that anymore."

Carlisle said nothing at all, although the joy rippling through his head betrayed him.

"Okay, I give up," Edward grinned. "Tell me why you rented this...monster."

"We," his lover announced, with near-ridiculous gravitas, "are going on a road-trip. And your car is too small to bring luggage."

The copper-haired boy didn't know whether to laugh or lock himself in his bedroom until Carlisle's madness passed.

[-]

"Where are we going?" Edward asked, fiddling with the radio dials. The autumn landscape unrolled lazily beyond the car's window, but it was too innocuous, a watercolour of burnished foliage and chilly sky, to reveal their destination.

"That's a surprise."

Carlisle, it seemed, was aiming for spontaneity. Not altogether terrible, Edward decided, but so unfamiliar that he did not quite know what to say. Even his lover's thoughts were crowded with medical terms in Latin, a certain way of keeping him from prying.

"You know I could just repeat the question every five minutes," he suggested, running impatient fingers through his artfully messy hair.

"I've already done my rotation in paediatrics. If a seven year old with appendicitis and an unquenchable desire for lollies doesn't annoy me, then neither will you," Carlisle said good-naturedly.

"_Lollies_? God, you are British."

That retort wasn't one of Edward's best, and the car fell silent for an hour or two.

[-]

And then, quite suddenly, the pickup truck decided that silence didn't suit it.

It choked and snarled while the thick smell of gasoline stung Edward's too-sensitive nose. He coughed discreetly, as though to tell his lover that his brilliant plans for the weekend were about to catch fire.

Intent on making the situation a little bit more dire, the car came to an undignified halt. At the edge of some God-forsaken road.

It was a very scenic road, in fairness, surrounded by a gold-crimson explosions of autumnal trees and the solemn stillness of watchful pines, but Edward doubted that this would improve the situation.

"Do you know how to fix cars?" Carlisle asked. There was a sad slant to his shoulders, and his voice had turned quiet and pensive. Grey suffused his thoughts, turning them dull with disappointment.

It was always like this when the doctor, amber-eyed and too polished for his own good, fell short of perfection.

Edward slipped warm fingers around his mate's wrist.

"I have delicate, pianist's hands, remember?" he said, trying to coax a smile from his companion. "I can't fix engines."

It didn't help.

"Where were we going?" he asked again, rubbing circles around Carlisle's protruding knuckles. "I guess you can tell me now."

"Vermont," he admitted.

"What's so good about Vermont?" Edward said, startlingly gentle. If only his love would concede that there was nothing there that couldn't be found elsewhere, his mood would improve.

"It's beautiful in the fall. Quiet too," he murmured.

Edward's idea appeared suddenly, almost painfully. Tugging Carlisle's hand, he pulled his mate out of the car. After a few smooth steps, he was at the back of the truck. Selecting a small, too-neat suitcase that could only have been Carlisle's, he rifled through it until he found a jacket, followed by a tastefully woolly scarf.

"Put it on," he insisted.

"Why—?" his companion wondered. Traces of his accent, soft and polite, had returned, as they always did when he was confused.

"Because we're going to stay right here. Watch the stars rise. There's a meteor shower too. The Draconids, I think," the boy said, remembering something he had seen in a heavy tome about astronomy a few years ago. "We might as well look the part of avid stargazers."

It was only too easy to sit at the back of the truck in an eager tangle of tweed and denim. Edward, too lanky to curl properly, pressed himself into Carlisle's side in a bony wedge. Together, they watched the sky turn from lavender to ink while the milky splashes of stars wheeled above the horizon.

"When does your meteor shower start?" Carlisle murmured, his words touched with awe.

"Late, I assume."

"And you'll wait with me?" the doctor asked. There was so much hope fluttering in his mate's mind, and Edward couldn't quite understand it.

"Of course."

He wanted to lean over and tell his love how beautiful this (_he_) was, that his happiness was so vivid that he could almost feel it twining like a living thing between them, how this was far from perfect but so _good—_

Instead, he pressed a kiss against ruffled golden hair and whispered, "I don't hate it anymore. You've changed my mind about the damn truck."

He was pretty sure that Carlisle hadn't smiled so brightly in a long time.

* * *

><p><strong>AUTHOR'S NOTE: <strong>The Draconid meteor shower, which happens in early- to mid-October was particularly spectacular in 1964. Edward and Carlisle chose a good night to stargaze.

There are going to be little bits of trivia sprinkled all through this story. I can't let all of my random facts go to waste, can I?


	3. 1974

_1974: One word at a time  
><em>

"Look what I found at the bookstore," Edward said, holding out a non-descript paperback novel.

Carlisle gently plucked it from his hands. "_Carrie_, by Stephen King," he said, pensive. "I don't think I've ever heard of him. What is it about?"

"A girl in high school. She has powers that nobody else knows about. At the end—well, I'll let you read it and find out," the younger man grinned.

"Do I sense someone identifying with the novel's protagonist?"

"Only a little. It's the scariest thing I've read in a long time, though," Edward admitted, running possessive fingers over the book's unbroken spine.

Carlisle was immediately defensive. Modern literature didn't compare to the classics—the works of Poe and Stoker, the Bronte sisters and Hawthorne—when it came to terror.

His companion half-snorted. "Yeah, yeah, your preferences are far superior to mine."

"I would never claim that."

Carlisle grinned, the sheepishness of his smile giving him away.

"Just you wait. Stephen King will be famous soon. I hear he's writing about vampires next," Edward said pointedly, before burying his nose in the beloved book.

* * *

><p><strong>AUTHOR'S NOTE: <strong>Stephen King's first novel published under his own name was _Carrie. Salem's Lot_, an exquisitely spooky vampire novel, followed a year later.


	4. 1977

_1977: Another one bites the dust  
><em>

"Carlisle."

"No."

"Please?" The young man's voice was caught between teasing and pleading, making it unusually difficult to resist.

"No."

"You are being remarkably _not fun_."

"And you are trying to make me wear leather pants. Only one of us is in the wrong, and it isn't me."

Edward looked from his lover to the garment he held in his outstretched hands.

"But we're going to see _Queen_," he said plaintively.

"I'm aware of that."

"There is only one appropriate way to watch Freddie Mercury perform, and that is while wearing leather pants."

"Never," Carlisle insisted, refusing to surrender. There was something too...youthful about the trousers, and too edgy. He couldn't imagine being the sort of person who dressed like this. Where were the comforting weave of tweed and the airy fall of cotton when he needed them?

Edward raised a playful eyebrow, as crooked as his smirk.

"You know what will be even better than wearing these?" he demanded.

Carlisle shook his head.

"Having me take them off of you."

The doctor's mind flashed, too heatedly and very sharply, to the glorious contrast of Edward's pale hands and dark leather, ice and pliant warmth coalesced.

Edward smirked.

"I just knew that would work."

* * *

><p><strong>AUTHOR'S NOTE: <strong>Queen did a tour of North America in 1977. I'm a little miffed that I wasn't alive back then. I (accompanied by my leather pants) would probably follow the band across the country. I tend to think that Edward shares my fervour.


	5. 1987

_1987_: _A cold war's ending_

"You Americans are brilliant!" Aro enthused, caressing the white cardboard of his coffee cup with pale hands. "Combining syrup, whipped cream and caffeine, and then making it portable. Ingenious."

Carlisle glanced around furtively, but the Starbucks cafe was crowded by customers and cozy with music. Nobody spared either of them a glance. Even his companion's hair, dark and loose as it was, made no impression.

_Thank God for this trend of ludicrous hairstyles_.

"I wouldn't recommend drinking all of that, Aro," Carlisle said, wincing a little as the scent of brown sugar and cinnamon drifted across the artistically tiny table towards him.

"I don't plan to. This, however, is such a useful prop," the vampire grinned. "How long, do you think, before this delightful business finds its way to Italy?"

The blond man stifled a sigh. There was no situation that Aro wouldn't contemplate turning to his advantage, and he had never liked that about his once-mentor. Perhaps it was a necessary trait, but it also rubbed at him constantly and uncomfortably.

"I admit myself curious about the purpose of your visit," he said, choosing his words carefully. He had not seen the Guard yet, but that meant nothing.

"Oh, you must know that we occasionally travel with no intentions whatsoever," Aro said, smirking like a cat.

Carlisle merely looked at him, one brow raised. Perhaps the ancient took the occasional holiday on some abandoned beach in Greece, but he doubted that Aro would appear in New York wearing a pressed suit and bringing with him too many questions with absolutely no ulterior motives in mind.

"Very well, my suspicious friend," Aro sighed, as though he had been caught doing something mischievous. "I am simply checking up on you. That is the correct turn of phrase, no?" He set his cup down and opened his arms in a guileless gesture.

"I have been entirely compliant to your laws," Carlisle said, pensive.

It was true. Neither he nor Edward had done anything to arouse the suspicion of the Italians. No matter what Aro desired from them, he would take that into consideration.

"Which is why you aren't speaking with Caius right now, dear one. No, this is a social call."

"I see. Is polite conversation in order?"

"Of course."

"How is...everyone?" A succession of pale faces with ancient names waltzed through Carlisle's thoughts, and he flinched. Aro's _dear ones_ ranged from tragic to pleasant, but he could not bear to think of all of them, faceless and cloaked, answering to one name.

"Lovely," he said, smiling fondly. "We do miss you."

"The feeling is entirely mutual," Carlisle said. It was true in an abstract sense.

His companion's laughter was a cold trill. "Ah, but you haven't brought young Edward to visit us."

Aro's thirst to meet Edward had been consistent for more than fifty years. Guessing the machinations behind that polite request was insidiously simple.

"His gift makes him...volatile. Travel isn't easy for us," Carlisle said gently, recalling his young mate flinching away from those whose thoughts he found unappealing, or squirming miserably in his seat as the monotony of human minds drowned him in a gray tide.

"Circumstances that I understand too well," the dark-haired immortal conceded. "I come with an offer, my friend."

"I do have a history of refusing, but go ahead."

"Bring Edward to Volterra if ever he is...ah, too much trouble for you. He will not have to flee from his nature there." Aro's eyes were aflame beneath the flimsy veneer of brown contact lenses, and his smile turned to an eager slash. "You may, of course, visit whenever you please. Or stay with us, if you choose."

_Three hundred years_, the tawny-eyed man mused, _and he still wants what he cannot have_.

"You are always trying to adopt me, aren't you?" Carlisle teased, hoping that humour would appease the feared leader of the Volturi where acquiescence couldn't be offered.

"As I've said, we miss you." Aro prodded his coffee thoughtfully. "But I sense that you will turn me down once more, Carlisle."

"Unfortunately, yes. I can't very well send my mate across the ocean because he's occasionally difficult," he said, leaning back into his chair. "Imagine where you would be if you turned that suggestion into practise."

Aro's laughter was delighted. "A fair point, old friend."

Silence arched between them for a while, before Carlisle dared raise another question. "If you came all the way to America, Aro, you must surely have wanted something more than conversation. My company isn't worth a seven hour flight."

"Nine hour flight," he corrected. "And you under-estimate yourself. Of course, it seems that I have not convinced you to join me. I take it that I will not be meeting Edward today either?"

His lover was safe and far away in Denali. The doctor could smile freely.

"Very well," the ancient sighed. "In that case, I can only ask you to show me your beautiful city. I am _so_ curious to know why writing songs about New York never goes out of vogue."

Carlisle sighed. There were worse things, certainly, than showing a giddy vampire with a boundless love of novelty through the most crowded city in America, but for the life of him, he couldn't think of any.


	6. 1999

_1999: Y2K _

The debate about how to spend New Year's Eve had been long, gruelling and as tactically charged as a small war.

Edward wanted to do something exciting. The passage of time remained a novelty to him, a vivid rush of sand and sunlight through his fingers. Parties and clubs were suggested, as well as exotic trips.

"You can't just stay at home," he said, with the sort of mock sternness that made Carlisle choke back a snort of laughter. "Even the Volturi are quite possibly more interesting than you."

It was true. The beginning of a millennium seemed solemn somehow, an event to be marked contemplatively, in a place containing only books, peace and the comfortable company of the man he loved.

Exasperated, Edward had thrown his hands in the air and announced dramatically that the world would probably end at the start of the new year anyway, and that building a concrete bunker was the best way to spend the evening.

[-]

"I love you," Carlisle whispered, his mouth soft as snow. The words were shivering shapes breathed into Edward's hair.

The younger immortal caressed his mate's face with graceful fingers, memorizing the already familiar terrain of pronounced cheekbones and gentle lips. Even the veneer of _forever_ couldn't quite erase the smile lines from around Carlisle's mouth, and that was, in Edward's opinion, the most beautiful thing imaginable.

"I know," he grinned, puckish.

"The correct thing to say is _I love you too, Carlisle_," the older man said, amused and not letting his lover slip from his arms.

Edward kissed him as fireworks burst and bled overhead. It was cold on the balcony of their apartment, the air heavy with the promise of snow, but Carlisle noticed neither the temperature nor the view.

"I do love you. So much," the slender young man admitted in a rush, before burying his face in the warm wool of his mate's shoulder.

"Enough to stay in on New Year's Eve?" he teased.

"Of course."

The apartment glowed golden behind them, a little Christmas tree leaving the impression of flickering lights upon the sliding glass doors leading outside. There were shell-pink carnations in a blue-flecked vase on the dinner table _("So much prettier than poinsettias," Carlisle had said)_, and a stack of unwatched videos beside the VCR that the doctor refused to replace, citing a lingering distrust of those shiny, characterless DVDs.

Edward took his mate's gloved fingers between his own.

"Come on, let's go inside. If the more dire news stations are right, the world's going to be explode any minute now, and there's nowhere I'd rather be than in bed with you, watching The Breakfast Club for the eleventh time."


	7. 2010

_2010: There's an app for that_

Carlisle had seventeen offices in sixty years. Airy solariums with sweeping shelving made out of pressed pine that pretended to be hazelnut. Forsaken cupboards that carried the astringent tang of medical dye and the acrid fear of fawn-eyed interns. Shared spaces filled with over-eager academics, their jackets stained by chalk and chemical spills.

He learned to avoid high hopes. Universities were not kind to their untenured professors. This one had given him a room on the fifth floor of the ancient microbiology building, accessible only by stairs so crumbling and treacherous that he half-expected to find a dragon at the end of the climb.

Beside him, Edward cheerfully loped up the narrow steps, carrying a cardboard box neatly labelled 'MISC' with a thick felt pen.

"You've got a detailed filing system going here," the bronze boy said, his smile teasing, bright as beaten metal. "This is heavy, by the way. What's in here? Rocks?"

"Only my favourite rocks," Carlisle replied affectionately.

"Figures."

[-]

This office, a corner study beside the fire-escape filled with shy sunlight peeking through the eastern windows and a defiant IKEA desk bearing the scuffs and scars of professors past, wasn't so bad.

Edward said as much.

"It's better than Ohio," he decided, setting down the box of MISC.

"Everything is better than Ohio." Carlisle remembered a veritable coffin of a room, made worse by the sudden escape of rats from the psychology laboratory down the hall. To combine insult and injury, the clever rodents visited him far more than the eager-to-graduate seniors he taught for two miserable semesters.

He set his laptop, the printer and a bird's-nest of cords on the desk and indicated to the bare shelves.

"We should make this look presentable," the golden-haired vampire mused. Books and mementos, the contents of the box, were the clever accoutrements of humanity. _Meet Professor Carlisle Cullen_, they said politely. _He likes baseball, tasteful rock 'n' roll, and landscapes in oil. He travels to Europe. His brother (or lover) is an incorrigible ginger._

The description fit him like a second skin.

"You don't have a picture of us," Edward said. He had peeled tape away from cardboard in long strips and buried his hands in the contents of the box he carried from the car. Beneath his fingers, the laminated posters and ticket-stubs crinkled into distortion as he searched.

"I do. Look at that—next to Carmen and Eleazar. That's us."

Carlisle pulled the steel-and-glass frame from the its nest of bubble-wrap and pointed. Beside the vampires from Alaska, dark-haired, smiling and almost disgustingly photogenic, was Edward in miniature, clutching his hand.

"That's _tiny_," his lover said, unappeased.

"It isn't my fault that you refuse to be photographed," the doctor insisted. "Somebody would think that we can't be captured on film, the way you react."

Edward's crooked grin resurfaced, a jagged shard of a gesture that could convince Carlisle to do anything.

"Come here," he insisted.

"Oh no—"

"Stop complaining and _smile_." Edward brandished his cell phone menacingly, the camera light blinking at Carlisle like a determined, crimson eye.

"Your iPhone? Must you? Are we teenagers?" he gasped helplessly, as the lanky young man looped an arm around his shoulder and held the flat little device at arm's length.

"I am. Now look like you're happy to be with me," Edward said. His skin was a little warm, flushed from elk blood, even through the cotton of his serviceable t-shirt. Carlisle couldn't help pressing against it, touching his mouth to an unlined forehead where the faintest shadows of veins turned flawless marble into art.

Edward's smile was beautiful. His golden-haired companion could feel it long before the obstinate iPhone displayed a grainy after-image on its screen.

"And a silly picture now," Edward said, decisive. Carlisle went for the throat, a vaudeville vampire in a tweed jacket.

* * *

><p><strong>AUTHOR'S FINAL NOTE: <strong>Well, that was fun. Carlisle and Edward are almost sickeningly cute together. I wish them a happy eternity, filled with only the finest bickering, many silly-wonderful memories and a handful of friendly coffee dates with the Volturi.


End file.
